Tuesday, November 25, 2025 - The UK government has rejected a request by the Nigerian government to deport former Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, who was convicted of organ trafficking.
Recall that a high-level delegation sent by President Bola
Ahmed Tinubu met with officials at the UK Ministry of Justice (MoJ) on November
10, 2025 to discuss Ekweremadu's case.
Ekweremadu, 63, is serving a sentence of nine years and eight
months after being found guilty in 2023 of conspiring to exploit a man for his
kidney.
Ekweremadu, his wife, Beatrice, and a co-conspirator, Dr
Obinna Obeta, trafficked a young man to London with a view to harvesting his
kidney, which they planned to transplant to Ekweremadu’s daughter Sonia in a
private unit of an NHS hospital.
It was the first conviction for organ trafficking under the
Modern Slavery Act.
According to The Guardian, the Nigerian government
delegation, led by the foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, requested his
deportation so he could serve his remaining sentence in Nigeria.
A source at the MoJ has confirmed to the publication the
request was rejected.
It is understood the UK government was concerned that Nigeria
could offer no guarantees that Ekweremadu would continue his prison sentence
after being deported.
A government spokesperson said it could not comment on
individual prisoners. They added: “Any prisoner transfer is at our discretion
following a careful assessment of whether it would be in the interests of
justice.
"The UK will not tolerate modern slavery and any
offender will face the full force of UK law," a source said.
Beatrice Ekweremadu, who was sentenced to four years and six
months, with half spent in custody, was released earlier this year and has
since returned to Nigeria.
In his sentencing remarks, Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson said all
three conspirators played a part in a “despicable trade”. He said: “The
harvesting of human organs is a form of slavery. It treats human beings and
their bodies as commodities to be bought and sold.”
The judge described Ekweremadu as the “driving force” behind
the organ-trafficking plot, and said his conviction represented “a very
substantial fall from grace”
In February 2022, the young man whom Ekweremadu trafficked to
London was taken to a private renal unit at the Royal Free hospital in London.
It was falsely claimed that man was Sonia’s cousin and had agreed to the
£80,000 transplant.
Despite bribing a medical secretary the attempted transplant
by the Ekweremadus was rejected by the hospital in March 2022. But the medics
did not report the incident to the police.
The plot was discovered only when the victim, referred to as
C in court, fled to the police in fear of his life because he believed he was
being lined up by Obeta for another transplant in Nigeria.
Obeta had himself received a kidney transplant at the Royal
Free in July 2021 from another man allegedly trafficked from Nigeria.
He was sentenced to 10 years, two-thirds of which must be
served in prison.
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